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I couldn’t resist and made a quick video illustration for the news.

The American company Stoke Space conducted successful tests of a reusable second stage prototype. The prototype rose into the air by ~9 meters and landed 15 seconds after lifting off the ground.

The company, founded by former Blue Origin and SpaceX employees, is working on a new concept for the return of the upper stage. Instead of traditional engines with gigantic nozzles optimized for vacuum, their system has 30 relatively small nozzles, fully embedded in a heat shield, creating an effect similar to a wedge air engine in a vacuum. Also, their solution does not have thrust vector control actuators; the effect is achieved due to the thrust difference between the nozzles.

The first stage is planned to be similar in the return scheme to Falcon 9 and Neutron, the entire system as a whole should be able to put up to 1650 kg into GTO in a fully reusable version.

Continuing on the theme “Visited the Library Of Congress” to explore American press during WWII. Here’s a page of advertising from The Saturday Evening Post from September 8, 1945.

First thing that strikes you — all the advertising from that time in TSEP is text-heavy, and to understand what is being advertised, you need to read closely. Secondly, the advertising messages are quite elaborate. That’s not something you see nowadays. Today, people would be tired of reading by the third line. But back then, it seems it was a GENRE.

So, it all starts with the phrase “Look what the war has done”. You expect to see a girl missing an eye, but no, it continues “what it did FOR Patsy Ann”. It then explains why her glasses have different lenses. It’s on purpose for the advertisement. One lens is clear and glare-free, the other — with glare. It became possible due to a process perfected during war to reduce blinding glare on sights and rangefinders. Now, this discovery is being adapted for many civilian services.

Aha, thinks the modern reader, then this is an optics advertisement. Think again. Read on. “We, at Crane company, have admired such developments because glass production and glassware include thousands of valves and pipeline equipment, which is exactly what we do.”

Meaning, this is an advertisement for a manufacturer of valves, fittings, and plumbing equipment. And that’s actually what’s written at the bottom. Everything above — is just lyrical. Creative. Meanwhile, every second advertisement has something about the war. Either its products are somehow used, or military technology is somehow used in their products. This was always emphasized both in the text and the illustrations.

And another thing. Since color photography was apparently more expensive than hiring an artist, the illustrations are uniformly drawn. This really creates such a “warm, cozy atmosphere”.

There are many such examples. Will post more from time to time.

Today is a cultural-sports Saturday. Nadya and I took our bikes and went to the largest library in the world — the Library of Congress. I had been interested in Norman Rockwell, an illustrator who worked for The Saturday Evening Post. This magazine has been published from 1821 to the present day. Until the 1960s, it was published weekly. So, I was curious to browse through the archives. Couldn’t find them in regular libraries, and so Nadya and I registered at the Library of Congress. Now we have a separate entrance For Researchers. It must be said, registration took 5 minutes, and all you need is to bring an ID and your face for a photo.

Today was the second attempt to obtain the archive. The first, two weeks ago, failed. I had formulated the request poorly (like give me any issue from such a year to such), waited an hour while they processed it, and ultimately got asked to be more specific, by which time the library was closing. This morning I was ready and received two volumes. Several issues from May 1945 and 1950.

I specifically chose issues from May 1945 to see the place that the war theme occupied in the press at the time. The year 1950 was chosen more or less at random.

We sat in the main reading room — the very one from the first picture. It’s very quiet there, and Nadya periodically jabbed me in the side with her elbow if I turned the pages too loudly.

Now, about the magazine itself. It has very few photographs and the publications are accompanied by many colored illustrations and a lot of drawn advertising. It’s very unusual because that’s not the case anymore. Now, illustrations in a typical magazine are photographs or diagrams. It’s very hard to find something where an artist illustrates the text with oil or watercolor on every page. On archive.org, the magazine issues look very shoddy — black and white, with low contrast. Compare that with what I attached to this post.

The advertising deserves a discussion of its own. It’s completely different from nowadays. I will write about this separately tomorrow or the day after.

Also worth noting is that in the issues from the second half of May 1945, there is nothing at all about the successes of someone there on the front overseas. Yet every, every ad and many articles somehow involve the theme “the war is ongoing”. I should also write about this separately.

In general, we’ll return there some Saturday this year again. I want to look at the archives from the roaring twenties, the great depression, and the swinging sixties.

Meanwhile, wait for my follow-up on the impressions the magazine made.

P.S. By the way, it turns out that if you subscribe to the magazine on the website, access to the entire archive in color and high quality is provided for free. I subscribed. For 15 dollars, it will send the magazine six times a year, give access to the digital version, and to the archive from the 1860s

If delicious cottage cheese is impossible to buy anywhere, it is always possible to make it at home

Yuki currently has two modes – singing and sleeping. He sings all the time. At night, he goes out into the yard and sings to the sky. Near the window, he sings to the flowers in front of the house. From the balcony – when his favorite dog disappears over the horizon. And in between, he sleeps soundly. Half of my phone is filled with pictures of the sleeping dog.

About the environment.

1) Over the last 8 years, I have not seen a single person who was heavily drunk. Nowhere.

2) In the same 8 years, I don’t think I ever spoke to someone holding a cigarette. That includes cigars and weed, too.

3) Throughout my life, I don’t know anyone who got hooked on hard drugs personally, nor by “a friend pointing out a neighbor”. This includes those who got hooked on weed or other substances after we had lost touch.

4) No one who went to work in their field of study (systems engineer) after university.

5) I might be wrong here, but from my high school and university peers scattered around the world, it seems like none ended up in the USA. From the physics and math class, I can’t recall anyone who has left (though surely some have, I just don’t know), but from the university, more seem to have gone to Europe.

I’m sure that people from all three categories are somewhere nearby, they just seem to hide all the time.

If any of my classmates/groupmates are reading this post, correct me if I’m wrong; a bit of a reality check wouldn’t go amiss in my world of pink ponies and pooping butterflies.

Continuing about the interesting from the Museum of Failures.

This time about Rigello – a sister company of Tetra Pak, which introduced the world to the first “eco-friendly biodegradable bottles” in 1969. The advertising campaign emphasized the environmental aspects, and Rigello was touted as the most eco-friendly disposable packaging that could even compete with reusable glass bottles.

To produce a 33-centimeter Rigello bottle, 11.5 grams of plastic and 8.5 grams of paper were used. An empty Rigello bottle weighed just 20 grams, compared to a 33-centimeter glass bottle, which weighed 310 grams. It was also claimed that the material could decompose in nature, which was considered an advantage in terms of preventing environmental pollution. And customers boldly threw them into the forest. Overall, it turned out that they would outlast any nature. In the forests of Sweden, those eco-friendly biodegradable bottles are still being found today.

Continuing to post interesting stuff from the museum of failures.

The story about the Amope Foot File isn’t found on Google at all, so there’s a chance that the museum just made it up. But what if not. Listen up.

The Amopé Foot File, actively sold between 2016 and 2018, is a prime example of how a successful product can simultaneously become a failure. This device effectively removed calluses in minutes, leaving the skin of the feet soft and smooth. Consumers really liked it, and many after seeing ads and “friends’ reviews” rushed to buy one for themselves.

However, here was the problem: customers needed to buy just one such device practically for a lifetime. The Amopé Foot File was so good at its job that it required buying expensive spare parts about once every three years, and that only if you really wanted to spend the money. This led to the company management dubbing the FootFile product as Foot-Fail, blaming it for unsatisfactory profit reports and falling stock prices.

Another example is the products of the Pyrex company. Initially, the company manufactured dishes made of borosilicate glass, which were very durable under normal conditions. However, since this dishware lasted too long (sometimes being passed down from generation to generation), the company switched to producing less durable soda-lime glassware, which encouraged consumers to make purchases more frequently. True, at the same time, Pyrex had dishes that would explode under overheating or sudden temperature changes. Not much joy for a kitchen. And then Pyrex found a reason why customers should switch to the less reliable soda lime. Link in the comments.

Or consider light bulbs with long lifespans. There are well-known cases of creating light bulbs that could last for decades without failing. For example, the light bulb in the Livermore fire station, USA, has been burning for over 100 years. However, such bulbs didn’t find commercial success because manufacturers preferred to sell bulbs with shorter lifespans.

And here’s my dilemma right now. Ideally, it’s about time to change my three-year-old iPhone 12 Pro Max. But almost everything’s fine with it. Well, the battery has worn out a bit, yes. It no longer holds 15 hours of active use like it used to. And that’s it. It’s a fine phone otherwise. It’s been three years already. So, AT&T is currently selling me an upgrade (with trade-in) to the iPhone 15 Pro Max for an additional payment of just $130 with zero-interest installment over 2 years ($5.5 per month). Well, what to do. I’ll be taking it. If it weren’t for the slowly dying battery, it would last another three years for sure. But then, in electric cars, batteries don’t degrade by 20 percent over three years. Maybe they specifically make it like that in the phone?

In general, the above cases are a classic example of the dilemma of products that are “too good” to be commercially successful.

Update to my list of good YouTube channels for drawing. If you have any recommendations, let me know—I update it from time to time.

I was curious about when and why airports started prohibiting the carrying of liquids in volumes greater than 100ml into the boarding area.

It turns out that the cause was an exposed al-Qaeda conspiracy (of course, it had to be them). The terrorists initially planned to use gas to create an explosive device, but later decided to carry hydrogen peroxide on board in bottles of rose water. Special attention was given to making the bottles look unopened. At that time, and perhaps even now, it’s difficult to detect liquid explosives with traditional baggage scanning equipment.

In intercepted documents, it was indicated that half a kilogram of liquid explosive could destroy an airplane, and there was a reference to a similar effect with the plastic explosive Semtex in the case of the Pan Am flight explosion over Lockerbie in 1988.

The terrorists, as claimed, were captured two weeks before the planned action. And since 2006, we can’t carry yogurts and shampoos.